Telephones used in various available communication networks have a relatively simple architecture and provide well-known features to their users. However, users who are hearing impaired and/or who suffer from some type of speech impediment, for the most part, cannot use a typical telephone to any effective extent without subscribing to special features available from their service provider. These subscribers typically rely on voice transcribing services provided by their service provider and additional equipment that allow these subscribers to receive captioned text representing the words being spoken by another party during an established telephone call between the subscriber and the other party. The equipment may also have text transmission capabilities whereby the subscriber types his/her responses during the conversation.
At a communications center of the service provider, a communication agent having access to the established telephone converts (manually and/or with the assistance of transcription software and speech recognition software) the words spoken by the other party into captioned text and transmits such text to the subscriber. The communication agent also reads the text from the subscriber and voices the text to the other party. This particular arrangement is not only awkward, but the communication agent will be privy to any private, sensitive or privileged information that is being discussed between the subscriber and the other party during the established telephone call.
Regardless of the service provider and the communication network being used to convey (i.e., transmit and/or receive) telephone signals, a common problem is the lack of any features in the telephones themselves that are designed to address the difficulties faced by hearing impaired users and/or users with speech impediments. Indeed, as discussed above, in order for such users to use currently available telephones, they rely mainly on special services provided by telephone service providers. In many such instances, the hard of hearing user who is receiving the text is not even aware that the captioning is being done by a communication agent who is listening to his/her conversation with another party. As a result the user has a false sense of privacy during his/her conversation with the other party to the established telephone call.